In the fading daylight at San Jose’s Music in the Park festival, two robust young men take their medicine, swaying as they enjoy the soft reggae music. They exhale the skunk-like odor of marijuana with nonchalance a few yards away from a cop.

Their medical marijuana cards give them legal immunity.

The scene is becoming common in California, where people with ailments ranging from nausea to cancer can procure a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana.

A medical marijuana card allows patients to grow and buy marijuana under state law, and those in the system say that qualifying for this freedom is simpler than one might think.

“If you have anything wrong with you at all, you can get a card — or if you give the doctor 45 bucks,” said one of the concert-goers, who did not want to be identified, with a relaxed laugh.

Contrary to its intended use under state law, medical marijuana can function as a way for recreational drug users to get high under the protection of doctors’ recommendations and legal dispensaries.

It is a “three-pronged problem,” San Jose Police Sgt. Jason Dwyer said. There are those who buy without a card or lie to get a card, dispensaries that sell illegally, and doctors who issue unnecessary prescriptions.

Law enforcement is focusing on controlling the dispensaries, Dwyer said. In them, police perceive the biggest threat of corruption, and police can control the dispensaries more easily than they can the doctors, Dwyer said.

San Jose houses a total of 236 licensed and unlicensed dispensaries, according to Pedro Ramirez, operator of a local branch of non-profit dispensary ReHab 420. Ramirez said he got the figure from dispensary collaboration at medical marijuana conventions such as HempCon, which was held in San Jose in late January.

Ninety-eight dispensaries have a license, according to the San Jose City Council’s estimate during a mid-April meeting.

Dispensary owners estimate that smaller dispensaries have from dozens to hundreds of patients. Larger dispensaries have thousands.

Ramirez, who has a medical marijuana card for back pain from a car accident, places the blame for abuse on doctors who recommend the drug to those who don’t need it — not on the dispensaries.

“Medical marijuana patients have to get a card from a doctor recommendation to buy from any of us, but no one regulates who the doctors recommend but the doctors,” Ramirez said. “It’s too easy to get one.”

Colorful ads splashed in Metro magazine and on the Internet aim to attract patients looking for clinics with pro-medical marijuana doctors.

Eighteen-year-old John Nun, who preferred not to use his real name, “went legal” by obtaining a card after nearly a year of smoking marijuana illegally.

After a half-hour appointment, Nun secured a recommendation for medical marijuana from a clinic offering the service at HempCon, a medical marijuana trade show.

“You have to sign some paperwork and give information, and list background medical information,” Nun said of the process. “All you really have to do is provide your reason for it, which, for me, was my insomnia.”

Nun said he needs the marijuana to sleep, but he also uses it for recreation.

He said he shares and sells his medicine to friends who also use recreationally.

“It is very easy to get a card, and it’s very easy to abuse the system,” Nun said.

But on a recent Friday afternoon, the clinic’s two waiting rooms were full with more than 30 patients, illustrating the booming business of marijuana recommendations and the industry as a whole.

Yolanda Lomas, leaning on the door frame because all the seats were taken, said she came to San Jose 420 Evaluations because her doctor does not prescribe marijuana. This was her first visit with the doctor. She was there to get a recommendation, she said.

“I don’t want to get into any trouble for using marijuana. I need it for my knee pain,” Lomas said.

However, not everyone who hopes to get a recommendation has a real medical necessity. Recreational user Ken Ha, who preferred not to use his real name, plans to “take advantage of how easy it is” to get a card and make marijuana more accessible for himself.

Currently, his supply comes from a friend who has a medical marijuana card.

“I’ll go get a card sometime this summer, probably giving nausea or back pain as an excuse, but I don’t really have either of those,” Ha said. “I’d say a vast majority of card-holders aren’t sick. Out of the five people I know who have cards, only one needs it.”

Unlike with pharmaceutical drugs, doctors neither recommend how much medical marijuana to take nor restrict the patient to a certain amount each week, most likely because it is almost impossible to overdose on marijuana, Doug Chopek of MedMar Healing Center said.

That’s how card-holders like Nun can buy more of the drug than they need in order to give or sell marijuana to those for whom it is illegal to buy.

Since possession and distribution of marijuana is against federal law, the Food and Drug Administration cannot set standards for medical dosage.

Further complicating matters is that the amount of THC, the major active chemical in marijuana, varies in different forms of the drug, Chopek said.

Despite the abuse of medical marijuana in the industry, Xak Puckett, vice president of the California Medical Marijuana Association, remains an adamant proponent of the drug.

The CMMA is a nonprofit organization that supports regulation of the medical marijuana industry, according to its Web site.

Though he acknowledges that some may do “the party thing,” he said “it’s not up to [him] to be against it” as long it’s used for medicine as well.

“I am absolutely concerned that people would resell or misuse it, but I have no control over what happens after I dispense it. I can only hope it goes to its proper use,” Puckett said. “The healing is what matters the most, not the abuse. People that do that give it a bad name.”